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Review Summary

Tom Tykwer’s “3,” a forbiddingly sober and sophisticated comedy of adultery and sexual experimentation, is unburdened by the usual emotional markers found in films whose characters push conventional boundaries. Hanna (Sophie Rois) and Simon (Sebastian Schipper), who have lived together for 20 years and who separately embark on an affair with the same man, are childless hard-working Berliners in their 40s. Hanna is the host of an intellectual television talk show, and Simon is an art engineer for a struggling company that executes installations and large sculptures. Their common lover, Adam (Devid Striesow), whom they meet independently and pursue unbeknownst to each other, is a genetic scientist at the forefront of stem-cell research. The film, by the German director of “Run Lola Run” and “The International,” replaces the customary post-Freudian model of relationships and sexuality with a cooler, more speculative scientific view. The behavior of Hanna, Simon and Adam is devoid of narcissism and melodrama. There is almost no talk of gay and straight. Although Hanna and Simon are attractive, they’re not particularly glamorous or concerned with appearances and desirability. To an American audience swamped with images of cosmetic body modification, their lack of vanity may seem almost radical. In this quintessentially Germanic film, Berlin — where they live, work, and create and voraciously consume culture — is as much a character as any person. The collective sensibility on display is determinedly forward looking; you might even say avant-garde. Adam has many hobbies, including singing in a choir that participates in an eerily beautiful experimental performance inside a museum. The characters’ un-self-consciously smart conversations are peppered with names like Hermann Hesse, Erich Fromm, Baruch de Spinoza, Robert Wilson and Jeff Koons; everybody seems to know the references. The film’s futuristic sensibility is musically distilled by the soundtrack’s incorporation of the David Bowie hit “Space Oddity,” in which an astronaut finds himself suspended in space after a mechanical mishap. — Stephen Holden